Limitless fun with possibilities

Two movies that explore similar themes, both released in the same month, make for an enjoyable summer. 

A couple of weeks back i reviewed the movie Source Code. While Source Code was about ‘exploding’ possibilities of the brain & mind, Limitless is about the ‘imploding’ ones. Let me explain.

Source Code dealt with the idea of tapping into universal consciousness and an individual brain & mind reaching out to harness that power. In that sense it is ‘explosion’ oriented. Limitless deals with consciousness too, in the sense of a super sense of awareness. A sense that not only makes you see better what’s around you now, but brings alive those mental circuits which are silenced away in the repressed memories, including some that you did not even know you had made, but nevertheless got trapped in the synaptic meshes. Working upon the fact that at any point of time and therefore cumulatively, we harness only a nominal fraction of our minds’ potential, Limitless, based on a novel ‘The Dark Fields’ by Alan Glyn, explores, quite plausibly, what could we really do if we had the power to use the entire brain/mind together. Can the brain & mind really run like parallel processors on turbo charge? If the brain & mind ‘imploded’ in a controlled manner, what would the output be? It’s neatly imagined by the original writer and executed by the director.

The movie itself is finely done. The storyline starts with a narrative timeline which then midway switches into ‘realtime’, but throughout keeps you wondering where this is going, especially about the meta-plot of the direction of NZT and its effect on Bradley Cooper’s Eddie. You can only guess, because this is such a novel theme, you just have to go with the director Neil Burg on ride he is going. The subplots move like a predictable thriller, with a surprise or two thrown in. While Robert De Niro adds style to Van Loon’s character, he is not really shining through. But Bradley Cooper as the protagonist stands out with his performance. 

The storyline ends on an open note. So, while i am hardly on NZT, i can still predict there will be a sequel to Limitless. Definitely look forward to it, if there is one.

PS: This is my first Neil Burg. But i just found out that the earlier movies of his are user-acclaimed too. This will be one busy summer.

Man from Earth

I want to believe John. I am drawn to the the late writer Jerome Bixby's idea of truth. The movie itself, thanks to director Richard Schenkman, has a Knight Shyamlansque twist that has to be seen to be relished.

The movie starts with a coterie of colleagues pouring into the house of a professor who has unexpectedly decided to retire young. They try to understand where he is going, what he plans to do but cannot go far with it. Instead, based on what the professor first poses as a hypothetical questions- Would you believe if you met someone who has lived 14000 years?- the farewell party turns into a series of discussions that pick your brain. The professor tells them that he is a Cro-magnon cave man and had stopped aging when he reached 35 years of age. Since then, he has been trying to move around, learn and live with the fact. To cover his tracks and appear natural to those around him, he moves on every ten years.

While highly, and naturally so, sceptical about what the professor is saying- first that he is a cave man and then that he has had the opportunity to spend time with historical luminaries with omnipresent fame, the illustrious academicians play along and ask questions. They do this a half out of academic curiosity and a half out of trying to catch John's give away. That they do not succeed in the latter is predictable.

But, along the way in about 90 minutes of the movie very interesting possibilities open up and the fundamental questions get asked. While the movie set itself does not ,mostly, take you beyond the confines of the professor's living room, a part of your mind is racing at the intensity of what is being said. Issues around history, biology, psychology, arts, ethics, morality and faith get raised. A faith shattering revelation has the group divided over the rightness (not validity) of John's 'hypothetical' actions and a theological literist in tears. As he rolls on with his childhood memories, growth and eons of learning thereafter, your imagination runs amuck with scenes of how John's past could have been . The icing on the cake is a poetic end of the movie that works on the psychologist colleague who had lost his wife the previous night.

Like I said, I wanted to believe the story. I was trying to think if I have met someone that could fit into the profile of John Oldman. I think the script has that quality of playing on your innermost desire to know the truth and therefore to wish that John's is a real story. After all it could provide you with a part explanation of the world around you and before you.

Come to think of it, we never really notice much around us. Much less someone who only is trying to remain inconspicuous by purpose. Is John Oldman the quintessential cellophane man; who is our patch to the past yet trying to remain invisible. Moving on as the patch becomes a fix. It is easy to not know a cellphane man.

Is John Oldman representative of the generational cultures? Cultures, traditions and rituals have changed over the ages and they are doing so increasingly fast every few years, nowadays.

How many times has John told his story? Does it always end the same way? Does any one ever believe him? I want to but probably I wouldn't too; it is far too much unsettling to the rational basis of the systematic, yet incomplete, picture of the universe I have in me. But how much of anything do we really ever know?

Does John exist as a periodic reality check to see if faith, in the larger sense of the term, is sustaining? What would happen if he is able to convince everyone that he is indeed who is claims to be? Would the 'rational' among us cut him up to validate his claims? Would the 'faithful' among us test him by fire to see if he is pure and holy? After all in the largely faithless and cynical world of today, would even god not need to pass the test of fire, if he were to appear before us?

I filter movies from IMDB (www.imdb.com) and unless a movie has been recommended highly by someone, I wouldn't watch it if the score is less than 7.0. I noticed that as of this posting, the movie has an 8.2 from about 20000 people. Now, I know why.

Scores apart, this movie will stay with me for quite sometime.

Happy new year 2009!